Vitria Announces Value Chain Markup Language (VCML)

Vitria Introduces VCML to Standardize Business Collaboration Across the Extended Enterprise

New Universal XML-based Standard Delivers Dramatic Cost Reductions for Global 2000

Sunnyvale, California, USA. October 10, 2001.

Vitria, a leading integration solutions provider, today announced immediate availability of a new business collaboration standard, Value Chain Markup Language (VCML).

VCML addresses the number one barrier to widespread Web and Internet-based business collaboration within and across industry value chains -- unique and incompatible data formats for describing standard collaborative business documents such as purchase orders and invoices.

VCML is the first approach to standardize business documents in a XML format while retaining the structure and rich business terms embedded within those documents. VCML is an XML standard that is derived from the globally agreed-upon EDI vocabularies that are currently used to conduct trillions of dollars of business transactions by companies worldwide. VCML supports every known inter-company business process and supporting documents, eliminating the final barrier to seamless business collaboration while delivering massive cost savings across the value chains of global companies and industries. More information about VCML, including sample industry applications, is available at www.vcml.net.

"Vitria's VCML initiative moves costly, data-centric e-commerce squarely into the past, and seamless e-business to the now. VCML is a truly elegant solution to bridging disparate geographies, vocabularies, and XML dialects," stated Joanne Friedman, Vice President of Electronic Business Service, META Group. "VCML may actually remove the three 'R' barriers to global e-business -- risk, re-tooling, and reverse engineering -- and propel the semantic Web vision into reality."

"In today's business environment, the rapid integration of information with value chain members is critical to achieving cost reduction goals and gaining superior business intelligence," stated Frank Diana. He is Senior VP and CTO of the US Commercial Division of DMR Consulting -- a strategic member of the Fujitsu family of companies. "VCML not only delivers the ideal representation of mission-critical business documents, but it also facilitates intelligent business analysis through the very nature of its development structure. It is our belief that VCML will be a key component to realizing an organization's Extended Enterprise vision."

Global organizations can now deploy VCML's vocabulary-based approach to leverage and extend existing business standards and adapt easily to updated and new standards. Transentric, a wholly owned subsidiary of Union Pacific with more than 7,000 trading partners, has leveraged the VCML vocabulary data formats to produce TranXML, enabling approximately 1.5 million secure electronic messages a day for customers in a wide variety of industries.

"VCML has helped us leverage our existing B2B documents and vocabularies and those of our customers, while preserving the semantics contained in original documents throughout the transformation process," stated Fred Domke, Chief Technology Officer of Transentric. Transentric has coordinated the development of its TranXML, which is based in part on Vitria's pioneering efforts, to facilitate communication in the transportation arena. TranXML is a free, open standard that facilitates collaboration among participants in transportation and is a key strategic element in delivering timely and accurate data to Transentric's visibility and decision support applications.

"Enterprises rely heavily on the well-defined, agreed-to business terms that are used to transact over $3 billion per year worldwide," said JoMei Chang, CEO of Vitria. "The flexibility of our VCML vocabularies enables organizations to transition to and from any existing or future business standard and extend 30 years of the intellectual capital already invested."

VCML supports the North American, European, and Asian direct material procurement standards (including ANSI X12 and EDIFACT transaction sets in all current versions). Support is also included for industry-specific standards including aerospace, automotive, banking and finance, education, energy, government, healthcare, insurance, petrochemical, retail, telecommunication, and transportation industry-specific EDI documents. Utilizing Vitria's methodology for rapidly packaging additional industry-specific vocabularies provided by our VCML format, support will be provided to those seeking to integrate their industry-specific documents with VCML.

About VCML

Value Chain Markup Language is a comprehensive set of XML-based, industry-specific vocabularies (words and meanings) and documents such as purchase orders, invoices, etc. required to conduct business over the Internet. VCML schemas support over 100,000 pre-built vocabulary structures and over 4,000 pre-built, complete documents.

In today's economy, companies must leverage the trusted business semantics and processes that they currently rely upon to conduct Internet-based business transactions. VCML vocabularies maximize well-defined B2B business terms, meanings, and interactions already agreed-to within each industry. VCML provides a standard set of industry-specific vocabularies, transactions, elements, and guidelines that power value chain collaboration within and across vertical industries using a common syntax and semantics.

About Vitria

Vitria Technology, Inc. is a leading integration server provider. Vitria BusinessWare integrates applications and automates mission-critical business processes within and across the extended enterprise, reducing time to market, shortening lead times, lowering operating costs, and increasing customer satisfaction. Vitria is a global software company with over 25 offices in North America plus international offices in Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Korea, United Kingdom, Singapore, Spain, Switzerland and Taiwan. Vitria is a publicly traded company based in California. For more information, call 408/212-2700, visit the company's Web site at www.vitria.com or send email to info@vitria.com.

Contact

Vitria
Richard Kain
Tel: +1 408/212-2660
Email: richard@vitria.com

Prepared by Robin Cover for The XML Cover Pages archive. See: "Value Chain Markup Language (VCML)."

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VCML addresses the number one barrier to widespread Web and Internet-based business collaboration within and across industry value chains -- unique and incompatible data formats for describing standard collaborative business documents such as purchase orders and invoices. VCML is the first approach to standardize business documents in a XML format while retaining the structure and rich business terms embedded within those documents. VCML is an XML standard that is derived from the globally agreed-upon EDI vocabularies that are currently used to conduct trillions of dollars of business transactions by companies worldwide. VCML supports every known inter-company business process and supporting documents, eliminating the final barrier to seamless business collaboration while delivering massive cost savings across the value chains of global companies and industries. More information about VCML, including sample industry applications, is available at www.vcml.net. "Vitria's VCML initiative moves costly, data-centric e-commerce squarely into the past, and seamless e-business to the now. VCML is a truly elegant solution to bridging disparate geographies, vocabularies, and XML dialects," stated Joanne Friedman, Vice President of Electronic Business Service, META Group. "VCML may actually remove the three 'R' barriers to global e-business -- risk, re-tooling, and reverse engineering -- and propel the semantic Web vision into reality." "In today's business environment, the rapid integration of information with value chain members is critical to achieving cost reduction goals and gaining superior business intelligence," stated Frank Diana. He is Senior VP and CTO of the US Commercial Division of DMR Consulting -- a strategic member of the Fujitsu family of companies. "VCML not only delivers the ideal representation of mission-critical business documents, but it also facilitates intelligent business analysis through the very nature of its development structure. It is our belief that VCML will be a key component to realizing an organization's Extended Enterprise vision." Global organizations can now deploy VCML's vocabulary-based approach to leverage and extend existing business standards and adapt easily to updated and new standards. Transentric, a wholly owned subsidiary of Union Pacific with more than 7,000 trading partners, has leveraged the VCML vocabulary data formats to produce TranXML, enabling approximately 1.5 million secure electronic messages a day for customers in a wide variety of industries. "VCML has helped us leverage our existing B2B documents and vocabularies and those of our customers, while preserving the semantics contained in original documents throughout the transformation process," stated Fred Domke, Chief Technology Officer of Transentric. Transentric has coordinated the development of its TranXML, which is based in part on Vitria's pioneering efforts, to facilitate communication in the transportation arena. TranXML is a free, open standard that facilitates collaboration among participants in transportation and is a key strategic element in delivering timely and accurate data to Transentric's visibility and decision support applications. "Enterprises rely heavily on the well-defined, agreed-to business terms that are used to transact over $3 billion per year worldwide," said JoMei Chang, CEO of Vitria. "The flexibility of our VCML vocabularies enables organizations to transition to and from any existing or future business standard and extend 30 years of the intellectual capital already invested." VCML supports the North American, European, and Asian direct material procurement standards (including ANSI X12 and EDIFACT transaction sets in all current versions). Support is also included for industry-specific standards including aerospace, automotive, banking and finance, education, energy, government, healthcare, insurance, petrochemical, retail, telecommunication, and transportation industry-specific EDI documents. Utilizing Vitria's methodology for rapidly packaging additional industry-specific vocabularies provided by our VCML format, support will be provided to those seeking to integrate their industry-specific documents with VCML. About VCML Value Chain Markup Language is a comprehensive set of XML-based, industry-specific vocabularies (words and meanings) and documents such as purchase orders, invoices, etc. required to conduct business over the Internet. VCML schemas support over 100,000 pre-built vocabulary structures and over 4,000 pre-built, complete documents. In today's economy, companies must leverage the trusted business semantics and processes that they currently rely upon to conduct Internet-based business transactions. VCML vocabularies maximize well-defined B2B business terms, meanings, and interactions already agreed-to within each industry. VCML provides a standard set of industry-specific vocabularies, transactions, elements, and guidelines that power value chain collaboration within and across vertical industries using a common syntax and semantics. About Vitria Vitria Technology, Inc. is a leading integration server provider. Vitria BusinessWare integrates applications and automates mission-critical business processes within and across the extended enterprise, reducing time to market, shortening lead times, lowering operating costs, and increasing customer satisfaction. Vitria is a global software company with over 25 offices in North America plus international offices in Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Korea, United Kingdom, Singapore, Spain, Switzerland and Taiwan. Vitria is a publicly traded company based in California. For more information, call 408/212-2700, visit the company's Web site at www.vitria.com or send email to info@vitria.com. Contact Vitria Richard Kain Tel: +1 408/212-2660 Email: richard@vitria.com Prepared by Robin Cover for The XML Cover Pages archive. See: "Value Chain Markup Language (VCML)."